In a victory for libraries, the Senate on October 23 passed an appropriations bill that included a mandatory public access directive for research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Despite heavy lobbying from publishers against the public access provision, as well as White House opposition and the threat of two last-second amendments to gut it, the legislative battle culminated yesterday with overwhelming approval of the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill (75-19). If enacted with the NIH language fully intact, the law would require NIH researchers to deposit their papers in the NIH's PubMed Central database to be publicly available within a year after publication.

The people paid for this research and it's nice to see our lawmakers affirm that they have the right to see it. This is just the start. Good stuff!